Subj : FSP-10xx-1: BBSID Kludge Specification
To : Michiel van der Vlist
From : Rob Swindell
Date : Fri Dec 29 2023 04:15 pm
Re: FSP-10xx-1: BBSID Kludge Specification
By: Michiel van der Vlist to Rob Swindell on Fri Dec 29 2023 02:31 pm
> Hello Rob,
>
> On Wednesday December 27 2023 18:50, you wrote to me:
>
> >> 2) What exactly do you mean by "monocased"?
> >> A) Upper case only.
> >> B) Either case but the same case for all characters in the string.
> >> C) Any case but case will be ignored when processing.
> >> D) Something else.
>
> RS> A.
>
> Then I suggest you call it just that: "upper case". Using exotic synonims
> may benefit poets and novel writers but technical documentation should be as
> clear and unambigues as possible. Especially when part of the intended
> audience has a different native languange than the author. I have never come
> across "monocased" and even Google can not help me.
I didn't invent the term "monocase". e.g. pg 259 of K&R's C Programming Language.
> >> 4) But why all these restrictions?
>
> RS> QWK software is largely MS-DOS software, sor for a BBS ID to be
> RS> QWK-compatible, it generally needs a MS-DOS-compatible base filename.
>
> Backward compatibility has pros and cons. In the beginning of a transition
> process it can be usefull but later in the transition process the pros erode
> and the cons get stronger. It gets in the way of the new. Your BBSID
> proposal is presented as a means to facilitate the use of Avatars in
> messages. For this use the maximum of 8 upper case ASCII characters is a
> serious and needless limitation. So why insist on backward compatibility
> with QWK. QWK is not even a Fidonet standard!
I suppose no good reason. For this purpose, any string would actually do.
> RS> I'm not saying it should be. I'm just documenting this new kludge that
> RS> you and other FTN nodes will find on their networks now (and over the
> RS> past few years).
>
> For things that are not strictly within Fidonet but that are usefull to be
> documented anyway, there is the reference library.
Sure, that'd work fine. Worst case, I'll just put this on my wiki.
> >> 6) As a side note I would like to add that the idea is not entirely
> >> new.
>
> RS> This is in actual use and has been for years now. It's not just an
> RS> idea.
>
> Henk Wever's GIF kludge was not just an idea either. It has been in actual
> use for several years.
I've never seen the "GIF kludge" in actual use. <shrug>
But in any case (I can't seem to find the FTSC doc that describes that kludge), my recollection was that other Avatar/Gif thing provided a link to an image file to be used as an avatar. Not the same thing as a correlatable system ID (what I'm doing).
--
digital man (rob)
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